Word Count: 720

“Late night?”

Marissa looked up from the papers she had littered over the coffee table to see Cal standing in the doorway, Lilah resting over his shoulder, only recently rocked back to sleep.

Guilt erupted quickly.

She hadn't even heard Lilah wake.

“Sorry,” she said, “I...”

“Can't sleep?”

Marissa lowered her gaze back to her papers but didn't quite succeed in making herself look busy. “I thought I'd get some work done, but it doesn't seem to be happening.”

“You didn't get in until eleven,” Cal said.

“You were awake?” Marissa asked.

There was that guilt again.

“Might've been,” Cal said.

“Sorry,” Marissa apologized again.

“What for?”

Marissa didn't answer. It occurred to her that hiding the fact that she fought monsters was going to be rather difficult as far as Cal was concerned. Maybe they shared no romantic feelings for one another, but they shared a daughter, and they'd been friends for most of the last eight years. Cal was bound to notice something eventually, likely before anyone else did, and if he couldn't figure out the truth on his own he'd start jumping to conclusions that would probably be even worse.

But the alternative was trying to explain something that didn't make a lot of sense, and potentially drawing Cal, and by extension Lilah, into it. Too many people in her life were already involved, all of them family. The last thing she needed was for Cal to be pulled in too.

Someone in Lilah's life should be normal, Marissa thought.

“Look,” Cal said, “you don't have to explain what's going on. It's okay.”

Marissa looked up, immediately paranoid. “What do you mean?”

For a moment she expected he was about to tell her he was a knight too. Instead, what she got was, “If you want to go out with Michael, go out with Michael. I'm not going to judge you for it.”

“I'm sorry,” Marissa gaped, flabbergasted. “Michael?”

“Yeah, that Gallo kid.”

“Michael Gallo?”

“You think I didn't know? You've gone out to see him a handful of times already. Hey, good for you. Young, huh? You think if I had the chance I wouldn't go after a hot piece of—”

“Cal!”

“What?”

This was insane. This was utterly insane. She was a knight with a non-magical magical teapot, donned in pink and frills, searching the streets for monsters while her oldest kid pranced around in frilly hotpants doing the very same, along with her son-in-law in a helmet like Thor, while some cranky ghost woman lurked around on Venus sneering bitterly about love, weak wills, and unseemliness. In just the last nine months Marissa had been thrust into an alien war she didn't even completely understand yet, and now she was being accused of—and congratulated for—having an affair with her twenty-seven-year-old ally who happened to be the only person who knew who she was, by the man who'd helped to bring her youngest daughter into existence.

If she'd known this would happen upon returning to Destiny City, Marissa might have considered staying in New York.

She thought about correcting Cal and setting the record straight but... it was just so much easier letting him think what he wanted to, as much as it galled her to play along.

“You're right,” she conceded, forcing the mortification down. “It's just been a while since I've... you know... done this.”

Ugh. Of all the people. Michael Gallo.

“Oh, trust me, I know,” Cal said and smiled broadly.

Marissa gave him a look to show him exactly how unimpressed she was by him.

“What?” Cal said. “It's true.”

“Yes, well...”

“You want some tea?” he asked.

“I've already had two cups,” she said.

“No reason not to have one more.”

“Fine,” Marissa relented. “But I'm not going to go into any details just because you're making me tea.”

“I wasn't expecting you to,” Cal said cheerfully, “but it's worth a shot.”

Marissa rolled her eyes as Cal turned to make his way into the kitchen, Lilah still sound asleep against his shoulder. Once he was gone, Marissa dropped her head onto the coffee table with a thunk.

What the hell had become of her life?